‘Idoani’ preaches African spirituality

WITH the aim of making Africans appreciate traditional religions, a filmmaker, who prefers to be called Sango; name of the Yoruba god of thunder, said his new movie, Idoani, will be an eye-opener.

Starring Nollywood actress, Bimbo Akintola, in the lead, Sango said the movie is generally inspired by the “total absolute discomfort with who we are, our language and our spirituality as Nigerians.”

According to the filmmaker, traditionalists have almost become a taboo in Nigeria. “When I tell people that my name is Sango and that Ifa is my religion, some will stigmatise me whereas, in other parts of the world, it is the fastest growing religion. We hear that the world is civilised now. I don’t know what that means,” he said.

Sango explained that Idoani is a film about two children Ifafunmike (Olamisimbo Owolabi) and Folorunsho (Omowumi Adewuyi), who are grounded in African spirituality. They lost both parents in the village so, they get on a bus to Lagos to search for their grandfather. The bus breaks down a few times before getting to Lagos. The children are then forced into an unplanned adventure that includes befriending a mad woman (Bimbo Akintola) and a dog in their quest to find their way back home.

“In shooting the film, we had to go the extra mile. We trained the children to get what we want out of them. We wanted a boy and we couldn’t find one so, we wound up, picking a girl who could play the boy’s role. She had to de-programme everything she knew about being a woman. She had to start living in a home environment wearing boys’ clothes, hanging out more with boys rather than with girls,” he added.

Sango, who used to live in the United States, was also, at some point, running a film school in the United Kingdom with an independent studio in Central London. Among his foreign productions are Quiet Storm and Niles.